Top Chinese diplomat tells US to 'shut up' on arms spending

It would be very hard considering that the vast majority of oil will very soon be coming by pipeline over land from Russia and Kazakhstan.

Also, China has 80+ subs. I guess Japan better start building a larger Navy for protection, huh?

 

If you go back read the whole thread, "containing China" was chanted by some anti-china posters.

It is human nature to want to be #1. There is no shame to it. I wasn't blaming anyone. I was just stating a fact. Wars broke out because of that, and will likely break out more for that in the future.

I don't think everyone is out there to get China. China has friendly relationship with +95% of the countries in the world. There are just a couple of countries that don't look at China friendly.

 

Check out the numbers first. That pipeline has not been built and even after it is built it will only count for a small propotion of the import. The majority will still come from sea.

Besides, I suppose the import and export of other products can be done through pipelines as well, right?

 

I never said this. If you think otherwise please find it somewhere in this thread. I believe that China is as much a threat to Japan as Japan is to China. It's called strategic balance. Any instance where I spoke of China's potential threat to Japan was me turning your 'Japan threat to China' arguments around and pointing out that they hold no weight.

 

Ability IMPLIES Intent.

 

How so? Most of us have the physical ability to do many things, even the most heinous criminal acts. But the fact that we have that ability doesn't imply intent. Perhaps you could clarify but I really do not agree with this statement as it stands.

 

No nation, given a choice, would like to see a potential rival and adversary become as strong, or stronger than they are... unless they were an ally. Were China democratic and an ally of the United States, it wouldn't be an issue. In the world of today, whether some of us like it, or not, that is not the case.

I won't argue against the fact that the United States will maintain it's military superiority over the rest of it's potential adversaries, or any combination of potential adversaries, for the foreseeable future. It doesn't matter whether the Democrats or the Republicans are in control of the government, despite the lies put out by Bush's political machine. I support that goal. It won't last forever... no great power keeps it's supremacy indefinitely, but we will maintain our position for quite some time into the future.

My wish would be for a peaceful world where militaries were strictly for the purposes of a country like Switzerland, a military designed to protect the country, and make an attempt to capture it so painful that most adversaries would forget the idea. That's what kept Hitler from taking the country in WWII. He probably would have gotten around to it, given his megalomania, but their deterrent worked long enough for that to become a non-issue. Sadly, the world has proven to still be a very dangerous place, post-Cold War.

Bush has made the world even more dangerous, doing incalculable damage to this country and it's relations with the rest of the world. Unlike leaders in China, he won't be around "forever." His party is very likely to lose control of Congress in November, which will be a big curb on his lunacy, and he has less than 3 years left in office. (thank god) I won't argue that the United States has played the "bully," during Bush's presidency, post-Afghanistan, which I supported, and still support. He threw away the near universal sympathy and goodwill given the United States after the attacks of 9/11, and that is unforgivable.

I was an anti-war protester during Vietnam, and a pacifist. I'm not for the US taking military actions against another country, unless they are a clear and present danger to the United States, or one of our allies, which would make it a defensive action. That is one reason why I believe George W. Bush to be the worst President of my lifetime, and I'm old enough to have voted against Nixon. I won't go into just how stupid his foreign policies have been. I don't feel like writing pages of stuff at the moment, already writing more than I intended.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

That's a misleading statement. The Chen admin has been proven as corrupt and incompetant as their American counterpart (recent scandals involving his wife is only a recent case of the norm). It doesn't mean that the people want Chen removed because he's following the independence path that Lee promoted. The Taiwanese are still ambivalent over this issue and rather pursue the status quo more than anything else.

A major component of this topic is whether the status of Taiwan is an internal matter for China or not. It's a no brainer that China's increased spending is viewed in the lens of overtaking Taiwan. Taiwan's former technological superiority is slowly losing ground and there's uncertainty from all parties on how that'll be handled.

The US would undoubtedly be worried if a major Asian trading partner was caught in a destructive war or embargo. Key portions of our electronics sector immediately depends on Taiwan's exports. It's also likely the US would honor its defense commitment depending on the circumstances. Japan would be affected as well. They'd also feel the economic impact, but they're militarily linked by their association with the American umbrella. They have their internal politics, but it wouldn't be reassuring if the American side faced defeat or setbacks. It'd get real ugly.

As for American or Japanese influence upon Taiwan, it's highly debatable whether that relationship will get stronger during peacetime than it already has. Taiwanese investment is rapidly flowing into China and will continue to. The American government has prevented the Taiwanese government from attaining nuclear technology in the past, so you really have to question to what degree Taiwan is being used as an American tool. Are the Americans fostering aggression or is it a continuation of past foreign policy for maintaining Taiwanese autonomy? Different ways to look at it....

There are some signs of economic and resource related battles looming in the future, but I doubt it's the US or China's intent to become heated military rivals. The EU holds an economy the scale of the US. India will also be a future power, yet the US is trying to maintain closer relations. So it's difficult to claim frosty relations as a result of China's superpower ascendency instead of China's authoritarianism.

A democratic Chinese government would solve many of the issues revolving Taiwan and Tibet. It could end American policy that's been maintained since the Cold War. Finally, it'd give a greater clout to claims of what the Chinese people feel or to whom the Chinese people are threatened.

 

OK I'm coming very late to this thread and am still reading through it but I had to respond to this.

For me personally I find the KMT position of having a legitimate claim to the all mainland China ridiculous, and I come from a family with a KMT background that fled Nanjing in 1949 to Taiwan. While there is no true democracy in the PRC the people of the PRC have put up with the CCP and are very unlikely to welcome the KMT back to rule them. Further the KMT of Chiang Kai-Shek wasn't the KMT of Sun Yat Sen and was corrupt and dictatorial. I'm sure our Taiwanese friend Lil can remark on Chiang's heavy handed rule of Taiwan after 49. IMO the best thing that could happen to the whole situation is for the PRC to truly democratize and invite the KMT to come back and run in open elections. Even if that happened I doubt the KMT would win many seats in a PRC parliament.

Regarding Taiwan though I personally don't see the big deal with them becoming independent. They've been separate countries for more than half a century and seem to be doing well on their own. I don't think all of the sabre rattling is worth it and if the PRC wants Taiwan to return it shouldn't be done under threats but through the democratization of the PRC to the point that Taiwan can feel that it won't be ruled from Beijing and can keep a lot of self-determination while being part of a greater China.

 

OK I've gotten through the thread and first let me say I'm not even about to attempt to argue who's military is superior to the other's. Having read Tom Clancy I know what a Sukhoi is but I would be better off arguing the arcana of bball stats in one the trade threads (and I don't know that much about bball stats) than the data being thrown around here on military numbers and hardware.

What I can comment on though is that I think many of you still don't quite understand why Chinese, and other Asians, are so uneasy about Japanese militarization. Many of you are right that the PRC is paranoid but this is a paranoia that does have a root cause.

Cohen in the Holocaust cartoon thread made the point that even if Ahmedinajad was putting on the show to expose Western hypocracy on free speech that he, Cohen, still had reason to worry since Ahmedinajad has said that Israel should be wiped off the map. So the prior knowledge of Ahmedinajad made his arguments for exposing Western hypocracy suspect. This is the same way that Japanese militarization makes the PRC very uneasy because while yes Japanese military spending could be all defensive in nature and they could have no greater aspirations the fact that they still officially honor war criminals and engage in historical revisionism continues to make the rest of Asia very nervous. The image that Japan is a peaceful nation is suspect when the Japanese themselves still seem to want to venerate and in some ways even long for their imperialistic past. So while yes 60 years have passed since the end of WWII but considering the brutality of the Imperial Japanese army is hard to forget and at the same time the Japanese themselves rather than trying to put it behind them still bring it through the shrine visits and rewriting their textbooks. So on the one hand there is an Asian version of the Holocaust dictum "Never forget" while at the same time the Japanese seem determined to remind people of their militaristic past by honoring it.

So I don't doubt that the PRC has been building up their military, is looking to project power and a big part of the reason they are doing so is because they consider Japan a threat. Keep in mind that there is a reason why the PRC does and that Japan's behavior isn't helping to alleviate Chinese fears but exacerbate them.

 

Great post Invisible Fan and agree with a lot of it.

 

It's asinine to assume China's military buildup is for invasion without proof.
National defense is a need, not a reaction. Therefore policy makers do not need to build an army in order to react to a specific threat. It can be done this way, but not a must. For example, it is claimed that the USA needs a big fat army to invade other countries, which justifies - in a controversial way - the need for high military expeditures. Let's step back from this claim a little and assume, that if the USA stops being aggressive and doesn't need a big army for invasion, and there's no threats of foreign invasion at this point
, doesn't the USA still need a strong military presence relative to her size to protect herself? The answer is obviously yes. Even there's no indentifiable threat, and no need to invade other countries, there's still a substantial need for the presence of a strong army for the purpose of self protection.

 

That is fine to a point, but the Chinese are not going to just let them blockade their port, and for the Japanese to try to maintain a blockade is lunacy. There are too many options at China's disposal to prevent it ranging from their own sub fleet, to their land based weapons and aircraft. Of course, under the logic that the ability to disrupt oil supply is offensive naval capability, then any county that can launch a boat and has access to explosives has offensive naval capability.

Why would they need to swim across the sea? They have landing craft that they can transport their army in and they have weapons that they can use to establish a beachead. They have the sealift capability to move several hundred tanks and thousands of troops in a single wave. I don't know how you came to your conclusion. Further, I don't know why the capabilities of the PLAN have any bearing on what I posted. Let's pretend that China had no means to capture territory, that has no bearing on Japan's navy being appropriate almost solely for defensive purposes.

 

The 18 world class subs, instead of speedboats, Japanese can cut off Chinese oil supply beyond South China Sea, where land based fighters or missiles have no use.

How does China move troops to Japan? with cargo ships? Oil tankers? Under the escort of 3-4 decent sized destroyers? Penetrate the block of 16 Japanese destroyers comparable to Aegis class and 18 Japanese subs comparable to Silo classes (assuming US stays out of it)? Maybe you should change your id to StupidMonkey, or maybe you know you are just B.S.ing.

Japan is the real threat to Asia. Every asian country knows it. That is what matters.

 

I wrote out a big scenario detailing how China could destroy this supposed 'thread' but just deleted it because you would make up some other plausable sounding but totally incorrect stuff, but:

• There is no such thing as an "Ageis Class" destroyer.
  
  
• China has a large fleet of LST's & LSD's including a brand new partialy built fleet of LSD's which cary LCAC's and unlike you the PLAN actually knows that they exist so they'd probably use them to invade Japan.
  
  
• I'm not sure if you are aware that Japan's submarines are all diesel-electric.

 

When you seek out to obtain the ability to do something you were not capable of doing before - it implies that you have some desire to act on that new capability.


If you learn how to drive - you have the intent to drive.

If you obtain the capability of stocastic calculous - then you have some intent to use it.

If you take lessons to learn how to fire a rifle, you have some intent of using that ability.

 

It depends on what you mean when you say "intent of using that ability".

You could learn to shoot a rifle because you intend to commit some heinous crime with it or you could learn to shoot a rifle for hunting or just range shooting or just in case you need to defend yourself but hope never to have to. It could mean any of these things. ROXRAN claims to have lots of firearms, so what does that mean in terms of "intent to use that ability"???

Take further the example of nuclear weapons. When the USSR developed them, did they "intend to use that ability" in the sense they desired to start WWIII and end the world in nuclear holocaust or did they "intend to use that ability" to retaliate in case of a first strike against them?

 

The point is, you do not obtain something without intent to make use of it in one way or another.

You do not build up a huge military unless you intend to use it either to intimidate or actually deploy.

You do not obtain nuclear weapons unless you have an intent that goes along with.

The point is, there is always an intent around acquiring something.

So when China obtains offensive weapons capabilities - you better be sure they are doing it because there is an intent to make use of it.

 

But it makes a big difference what that "intent" is exactly. There is a big difference between learning to shoot a rifle for fun, self-defense, hunting/skeet/range shooting, and criminal acts. To just say there is "intent to use it" doesn't say much.

Sure but there are lots of different "intents" and they are not equivalent. Maybe Iran wants to obtain nuclear weapons to destroy Israel or maybe Iran wants it so that what happened to Iraq doesn't happen to Iran because the Iranian regime has credible deterrence in case of attack, same wrt North Korea. Unless these regimes are truly mad, I can't imagine they'd ever just it first strike so the second intent is more credible than the first.

They could be obtaining them in the worst case scenario because they intend to take over the world Hitler style. Or they could be obtaining them as deterrence to defend geopolitical interests in case any of these are threatened but not because of some desire to wage aggressive wars of conquest. Both are "intents" but very different ones.

Unfortunately we live in a world where military power matters. To expect big nations like India, China, even medium sized ones like Iran, etc to just have no military force when rival nations are modernizing and developing theirs is simply unrealistic.

 

How does China move troops to Japan?
They put the troops and equipment onto transports like the Type 072-III, which can hold 10 tanks and 250 troops. They move the transports under the protection of a fighter escort plus a number of ships like the Project 956 Missile Destroyer and the Project 636 attack submarine for defense against surface and submerged targets, the Type 052B Multirole Missile Destroyer for added anti-submarine capabilities, and the Type 051C Guided Missile Destroyer for air defense. Now, while the air defense capabilities of their ships are lacking compared to the Japanese destroyers that are outfitted with the Aegis system, they do have a significant range advantage in they anti-shipping capabilities. They should have enough air defense capabilities between their surface ships and their aircraft to cover them for their steam to Japan.

Once they reach the islands, it is a matter of using the surface attack capabilities that their ships have from cruise-missiles, rocket artillery, and naval artillery in combination with bombers sent from their land bases (and likely from an aircraft carrier in the not too distant future) and with attack helicopters they can launch from their ships if they feel it is necessary, to establish a landing zone for their forces to be dropped off. Any airborne elements they may have can help with this stage of the operations.

Once their supply lines are established and they can begin ferrying their forces across the sea they could quickly gain a decisive advantage in ground forces.

No, it is not their inability to capture territory or the might of the Japanese military that keeps China in check, it is mostly the lack of inclination to attack Japan (an attack against Taiwan would seem more likely, though also improbable) combined with the knowledge that such an attack would quickly incur the wrath of the US, whose navy does clearly outclass that of the Chinese and everyone else in the world, for that matter.